


Indispensable for Gossip

by crookedwitness



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-03 01:09:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 22,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedwitness/pseuds/crookedwitness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elaine Tavish wants to enjoy art in peace. Her friend Mariella wants that passionate love story. When Lane stumbles upon Sherlock's fan site, something is set in motion that makes certain neither of them will get the things they want. Although, Moriarty might not get what he wants either. (Also posted on FF.net)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies in advance for the weird mix of Americanisms and Britishisms! (Britishisms?) Enjoy! Or not. Whatever.

“Lane Tavish,” Mariella called from the kitchen, swishing something that smelled like bacon around in the skillet. “If you don’t eat some breakfast, you’ll pass out on that fancy laptop of yours, break it, and never find a new job!”

“There are job ads in the papers, Ell,” I called back, taking a glance at my loose sweatpants and swiping a hand through my greasy hair. “And I think I’m going to take a shower and go to the cafe.”

I guarantee Ella rolled her eyes. “Eat, you stubborn woman,” she replied. The sizzling and swishing stopped. I shut my laptop and set it to the side, walking the few steps into the kitchen.

“Ella, you really don’t have to do this for me,” I said as she doled bacon and toast onto two plates. She shoved a plate into my hand with her only smile-- too sweet. Her clothes, professional, yet sensible enough for teaching grade school, reminded me just how drab I must look in comparison.

“Nonsense,” she replied, walking past me to the living room. She took the armchair, switching the television onto a news network. “You’d do the same for me.” She concentrated on the television as I walked back to my seat on the couch opposite.

Our flat wasn’t the largest, but it had enough rooms for Ella and me in the best and worst moments of our friendship. After being roommates for six years, we’d worked out most of the kinks in our relationship, but there still came the times where we just needed to be three or four rooms away, with all the doors between shut securely. So, when I say I was on the couch and she was in the armchair, she was practically on my lap.  
 I picked up my laptop and returned to clicking through job listings. When the words started swimming in front of my eyes, I closed the laptop. Ella was bustling around, calling out a goodbye and leaving without shutting the television off as usual. I sighed, taking a bite of toast and grabbing the remote off of the chair’s arm and pointing it at the television.

But who was that guy on the television, sneaking past the cameras with a silly hat on his head? I turned the volume up.

“-ock Holmes and his partner, Dr. John Watson. However, the two web sleuths aren’t the only popular topic in London today, for...” The picture slipped away from the attractive curly haired man and his friend, to a picture of a van almost submerged in water. I hit the red power button, writing the name “Dr. John Watson” on a nearby post-it note. For now, I had a shower to take and breakfast to consume.

After finishing Ella’s scrumptious meal and a shower that put a dent in our hot water for the day, I trudged to my usual cafe. Lizzie smirked at me from behind the counter and slapped a newspaper down on the counter in front of me, turning around to make my usual without saying a word. I laid out the cash on the counter, skimming the paper already.

That name jumped out again, “Dr. John Watson.” I picked up the paper and read the article more closely.  
 “What’s this about a web detective?” I asked Lizzie.

“What do you read in those papers?” she asked, setting my drink on top of the paper. “The John Watson fellow has this blog that he talks about Sherlock’s cases on. Sherlock Holmes apparently helps the police out on some cases.” She shrugged. “They’re kind of interesting, but I’m more of a romance girl.”

I laughed. “You probably lead a more fulfilling life than a mystery girl,” I replied, picking up my drink and paper. “And you know I just read the crime and the classifieds.”

“Should’ve read about them then.” Lizzie shook her head at me, mouth turned down in mock disappointment. I rolled my eyes with a smile before walking to my usual table.

The article on Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson was interesting, but it was the only front page article I read before turning to the crime section. I marked a few things with my highlighter before turning to the classifieds. Nothing appealing, as always, but I circled a few things anyway.

Then I booted up my laptop and looked up Dr. Watson’s blog. After finding Sherlock’s (more informative, less attention catching) blog and a Sherlock Holmes forum, I knew where I could share some of my findings.

 

 Three weeks later and I was surprised how well I fit in on the Sherlock Holmes forum. Although I didn’t really have any interest in the man besides his attractive curls and very warm looking coat and attention to detail... Okay, so I had a lot of interest in the man, but that wasn’t why I was on the forum.

I was on the forum because of the strange pattern of unsolved crimes I’d seen breaking out in the newspapers ever since I was fired from my lucrative job for my “attitude.” I mentioned the pattern in one short post and suddenly I had a lot of little helpers. Some were not so helpful, thinking anything that was unsolved and a little bit confusing would fit, but some people actually brought crimes up that fit perfectly, from strange locales like Estonia or even California.

I was getting a little more creeped out as I saw more and more people finding my claims believable.

“Are you on that forum again?” Ella asked, slouching in the cushion next to me.  
 I “mhmmm”ed, scrolling down a few new replies. Fcu9213 told me I was crazy. Someone with only vowels in their screen name thought I might be onto something, and another user wondered how I saw any kind of pattern at all.

“Are you telling other people about all those newspaper articles you looked at?” Ella asked, skimming the page over my shoulder.  
 “Yeah,” I replied, squinting at the screen.

“Patterns were always your thing,” Ella commented, leaning back in the sofa.

“Although that didn’t help me much in maths,” I mumbled in reply, scrolling down a bit more. “How was your day? Any fingerpainting kids get frisky with you?”

“Okay, I told you, Lane. The girl tripped. Her hands just landed on my shirt, no one was groping me,” Ella replied, shooting up in her seat and glaring at me. “And no, there were no mishaps today.”

“Good,” I replied, trying not to smirk.

“You’re terrible,” Ella replied, but she was grinning. “Are we still going to that art gallery opening this weekend?”

“Yes ma’am,” I replied, logging out and shutting my laptop down. I set it on the floor and crossed my legs, turning to Ella. “Let me guess, you have a date and his name issss not Brian?”

Ella frowned at me. “Just because you didn’t like Brian as much as you liked Craig doesn’t mean I got rid of him or something,” she replied.

“Uuuh, I know, but we both realized he was a creep as soon as he asked Neal if he’d be okay with him banging both of us.”

“We were in the bathroom, we didn’t know he asked that until after the date,” Ella argued, tucking her right leg underneath her left.

“Oh, he didn’t text you about it? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to tell you...” I wondered aloud.

“You probably weren’t,” Ella replied. “Neal is a big believer of people making decisions on their own.”   
“I just gave you the all of the information you needed to make a clear decision!”

“You told me he was a scumbag, Lane,” Ella said, stifling a smile. “Yes, I am bringing a man who is not Brian. Louise Applebee from school set me up with a mate of hers.”

“Okayyy,” I replied, rolling my head. “But if he’s a dirtbag I’ll put a restriction on the boys you bring to our nights out.”

“Deal,” Ella said, getting up and heading to the kitchen.

 

Although I was dressed up in my favorite cooler-than-thou dress and new attention catching heels, the only clutch I had was stolen last week. Sometime during the dinner with Neal, Ella and the jerk, it disappeared. Luckily I kept my keys in my bra, but calling and canceling all your credit cards, getting a new ID and mobile, and being out fifty pounds doesn’t really make you a very cheerful dinner companion. Not that I was cheerful before the theft, though.

“Ella, will you carry my stuff in your purse?” I asked, gathering the credit card that arrived in the mail that morning, keys and my new phone. She nodded, throwing me her purse. I slid everything into her bag. After another thought, I took out my flat key and slipped it in my bra.

“Thanks, this is one of the many perks of having an over-prepared teacher as a roommate,” I told her, handing her purse back. She nodded, patted her hair and muttered an “mhmm.” I stayed out of her way, she was in panicky first date mode.

A dozen minutes later, we were in the cab bound for the gallery. We seemed to be meeting not-Brian at the gallery. I would know, if Ella weren’t still in pre-date freak out mode. If she weren’t such a great first dater, I would be worried.

We walked the last few blocks to the art gallery, mainly to snap Ella out of her catatonic state, but partially because we didn’t feel like paying to sit and wait in traffic. Apparently the art gallery opening was more popular than we figured.

“He’ll be by the entrance, texting on his phone,” Ella repeated for what had to be the tenth time that night.

“Just like everyone else,” I mumbled, the exact same reply I’d given the past nine times.

She looked at me this time, mascara-coated eyes wide. “You’re right.”

“He’ll be looking for his date, unlike a lot of other people, and he’ll be looking for two girls who are looking for one man. I’m sure you’ll meet up. And he has your number, so if all else fails, you can just wait for his text or call.” We turned the corner and walked up to the tall building. A set of narrow white stairs led up to a thin but tall pair of doors, which was very well trafficked. In fact, the entrance to the building was the busiest area. 

I left Ella to her date-hunt. Normally I’d help, but my friend was too far gone in her worries to listen to any of my calming and we’d just drive each other mad. She’d probably prefer me to stay, but I’d prefer to look at art... If it made me a bitch, well, I am.

Half an hour later, I was still milling around the paintings. Ella waved a few minutes before when she passed on the arm of a goof in an orange dress shirt. I waved back, but was quickly interested in a man whining about everyone just pointing out the bad in a piece of art I personally saw no good in. 

“Hey,” said a male voice from my right. I was still listening to the skinny man prattle on about the balancing of dark and light in a world of greys, so I just waved my hand. It was supposed to convey, “shoo!” But I guess he took it as, “Kiss my knuckles,” because that’s what he did.

“Erm, what?” I asked, turning to the man with his slippery lips on my hand. “I’m sorry, I try very hard not to talk to people here,” I said, retracting my hand. His deep brown eyes nearly persuaded me to break tradition, but I’d always complained about my own brown eyes being mud-colored and ugly, so I strengthened my resolve.

“Why’s that?” he asked, tucking his hands deep into his pockets and slouching his shoulders a little. With his average height, he shouldn’t slouch. He could use every inch. He glanced at the painting.

“Telling would involve... You know, talking. What I don’t do,” I replied, a little perturbed, and unsure why. I turned back to the skinny idiot, but he was gone.

“Come on, you can talk to me. What’re the chances you’ll like me?”

“Low, which is kind of why I’m trying not to have to deal with you,” I replied, shouldering through the crowd to another painting. Hopefully I’d lose or offend the man.

“That’s just not nice at all,” he piped up from my shoulder. I sighed and rolled my eyes. “If I didn’t just ooze self-confidence, I might be deterred. You’re good at that. Deterring people, I mean,” he complimented, staring at the painting with as much interest as I would a dismantled car.

“Why are you even here?” I asked, turning my gaze back to the painting of a woman atop a bridge. 

From the corner of my eye, I could see his eyes flick back to me. They narrowed and ran down my body and back up it, before he nodded. “Not sure, really. Bought a new suit, had nowhere to wear it, heard about this place, figured I’d fit in.”  I took the cue to inspect his suit. It was far nicer than what anyone else was wearing, at least to my unfashionable eyes. “There’s some kind of charity shindig for the police down a few streets,” I pointed out, remembering Lizzie telling me all about it that morning. (“Prime manhunting territory,” she told me with a wink.)

A smile devoured his face like fire took to California in the summer. “I’m not really a fan,” he said.

“Great,” I mumbled to myself, not caring if he heard me. “A stalker and a freak.”

I wasn’t quite prepared for his laugh. It was a little manic, a little too loud, and a little rewarding. Most people didn’t find my initial abrasive attitude entertaining. Although, my attitude wasn’t usually this abrasive initially. It was usually a more subtle abrasion.

“Glad to find a girl who is such an astute measure of character,” he said after a few seconds.  
 I realized I was talking to him. “Woman,” I replied, falling into the flow of people to the next painting.

“Of course,” he whispered into my ear.

That was the first time I thought maybe I should be creeped out by the man.


	2. Two

Our living room was lit by a few eerie candles and the flickering television, but neither Ell or I were paying the romantic atmosphere the attention it deserved. Instead, we were talking about the disastrous art gallery opening.

 “He just followed you around after that?” Ella asked, picking at the hem of her pajama pants.

“I wouldn’t talk to him,” I said, shrugging. “He gave up after a while.”

“Did he ask for your number?” Ella asked, leaning toward me and almost splashing her tea. 

“I don’t remember it anyway,” I replied, biting my lip. Ella continued staring expectantly. It sucked that after so many years of being together almost constantly she knew me so well. “I wanted him to ask for it,” I mumbled, rubbing my neck and sipping my own tea. 

“Ahh,” Ella said, smiling. “So a guy finally interests Lane Tavish and she lets him get away because she’s too shy. Awwww.” Her smile evolved into a beam.

 “I wasn’t being shy,” I retorted, snorting. “I was... Playing hard to get.”

“A little too hard,” Ella said. “What’s his name?”

“He told me his name was Jay Moore,” I said, shifting in the couch.

“Did you tell him your name?” she asked, slipping into the tone that she used to wheedle information from uncooperative students. She practiced that tone on me a lot.

“He knew it,” I said, furrowing my eyebrows. “When we left, he said, “I’ll be seeing you, Laney.””

Ella blinked. I blinked back.

“That’s...”  “Yeah, paired with stalking me through the exhibit, it’s a little strange.”

“You looked cute together, though,” Ella replied, setting her mug on the table and leaning back in the sofa. “Brown hair, brown eyes, both kind of arrogant looking... Although you were taller than him in those heels.”

“We were not cute. And I almost fell on him once because of those heels, which was not very elegant,” I muttered, watching my friend closely.

“Why haven’t I found that?” she asked, not paying attention to me. Her dreaminess used to annoy me.

“Because you’re looking for it. Once you decide you don’t need a guy, he’ll run right into you,” I said, repeating my habitual response to her almost weekly question.

“Lane, things don’t work in real life like they do in books,” Ella grumbled, continuing our usual argument. “There’s not foreshadowing you can catch in real life or anything, okay?”

“If you say so,” I replied, picking up our mugs and walking to the kitchen. “Just you waiit,” I sang, loudly enough for her to hear.

She laughed a little. I didn’t know why she looked so hard for a guy, but there were parts of Ella I wouldn’t figure out. We were just best friends and flatmates, not any more or less.

 

_You free tonight? -J_

It took me a few minutes longer than I liked to admit to realize who the text was from. But since I had all of my friends cataloged under silly names, it was very confusing that this texter was talking to me so familiarly.

And it was before noon and I was unemployed. I was barely awake.

_Since I never gave you my number, no._

_Give me one good chance and I’ll leave you alone as long as you want. –J_

Uh, like that would happen.

_Ell, Jay has my number... Your fingerprints. All over this. Quit matchmaking._

_Why, I would never!_

I didn’t bother replying. To either of them.

  “He’s texted you every day for the past week?” Lizzie asked, spending her break at my table with Neal and me.

“Yeah,” I grumbled, scanning the newspaper more than reading it.

“Are you sure he’s not gay?” Neal asked, propping his head on one hand and staring into the distance. I whacked him upside the head.

“I mean, she doesn’t exactly look like a guy, Neal,” Lizzie said, ruffling Neal’s perfectly ruffled hair. “I think you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

“Damn,” he said easily, removing his head from his palm and hunching over in his seat to take a few inches off of his frame. “Why haven’t you shagged him yet?”

I scoffed. “Ella’s trying to set me up with him...”

“Just because Ella has your best interests at heart, doesn’t mean--”

“Neal, it’s hopeless. You know Lane. Someone tells her to do something, she won’t do it. Especially if she’s afraid of it,” Lizzie cut in.

I knew what they were doing. I saw the glances. But it worked.

_What time should I be ready?_

I sighed and looked up from my phone to see my two friends high fiving. “This is going to severely cut into my pattern-finding time,” I pointed out, turning one side of my mouth down as I glanced at the black marks of the newspaper.

“Oh, gee. The world will just fall to pieces,” Lizzie said before retying her apron, sending Neal a look, and walking back up to the counter.

“Wasn’t that her break?” I asked. “It was really short.”

“She didn’t need a break to convince you to go on a date with that boy,” Neal replied, sipping his tea. “She’s a professional.”

_5:30 pm. Dress nicely! –J_

 

He knocked on the door five minutes early. I was still running around grabbing things to shove into Ella’s purse and I really needed to brush my hair, so I was more than a little stressed. I took a deep breath and flattened my hair with my hands.

“Hi,” I said, flinging the door open without looking. I rummaged through the envelopes and odd bits on the table by the door, wondering if I’d tossed my key there when I returned from the store earlier. “I’m not used to people being on time, let alone early, could you hold on a minute while I run upstairs?”

I didn’t find my key so I looked out the door. Snow fell softly around the man that stood at my door. Jay was dressed to the hundreds in a suit that looked more like silk than real fabric. I suddenly realized I was out of my league, clothing wise at the very least. My outlet-bought black dress that only forty minutes ago seemed fancier than necessary was now very drab.

“No problem, Elaine. I can just wait here,” he said as I moved back for him to walk in. I made my face smile back, thinking about throwing off this dress and slipping into another as soon as I cleared my room’s doorway. “Your dress is perfect,” he half chided, stepping a little closer and slipping his hand between my right hand and the hem of my dress that I was shocked to find myself fiddling with.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling, but cursing that I couldn’t very well change now. “Five minutes, tops,” I promised, turning and sprinting up the stairs. In heels, for me, that’s an accomplishment.

I brushed my hair and made faces at my mirror before deciding there was no more to be done, snatching my wallet and key (which was on my dresser) and tossing them on top of the other things in Ella’s purse. I carefully descended the stairs. It was strange that Jay was walking around the hallway just inside my flat, inspecting the corner of the table by the door that I never managed to avoid as if it was the key to a murder investigation. Makes sense now.

“Ready,” I said, spreading a smile wide across my face. He looked up with a similar smile, holding out his right hand for mine.

The restaurant required a level of dress I did not measure up to. I probably couldn’t even get a glimpse through the window at the patrons, without a date was dressed a few levels above the norm and wielded glares and cash like a man who brought underdressed women into fancy restaurants regularly. Or maybe I just needed a man that oozed self-confidence.

A skinny woman in a black dress fancier than mine led us to a table in the back corner. Jay pulled out the seat facing the corner for me, but I brushed by him and sat in the other seat. Mostly to bug him. I hoped it would compare with the annoyance he foisted on me the past week.

He smiled nonetheless, a very small smile, and took the seat that placed his back to the room.

All the ladies around us wore dresses that were designer, one of a kind or extraordinarily expensive in other ways I couldn’t understand. I assumed this because of the disapproving looks they were giving my own dress. I scowled, to cover my blush, before turning to the restaurant itself.

The walls were all a dark brown or red color, spotted with alternating candles and lights. Each table was small, with two or three seats around it at most and covered with a very slippery cloth. This was the kind of place I would never be able to enter again.

I returned my attention to my date. His smile was larger now, probably due to my open mouth. I shut it and scrunched my face up at him. “Sorry, not really used to the level of decor here,” I excused myself, assured that I wouldn’t be getting a second date with this mysterious man. Not that I wanted one. What?

“Me either,” he replied, flipping open his menu. It was just two pages, the left and right page. I flipped my own open, perplexed. What a crazy place.

“Are you two sure you would like to eat here?” asked a tall man with broad shoulders. I wondered how much his uniform cost.

Jay tilted his head at the waiter. “Pretty sure, yeah,” he said, his voice taking on a small town, American accent. “I mean, gee, this is fancy!”

“Jay,” I started to question.

He paid no attention to me, instead telling the waiter the most expensive thing on the menu I liked, the steak, and the most expensive thing on the menu, period, which was some kind of French name he seemed to pronounce correctly. 

All of which he did in the American accent. The waiter nodded and bowed slightly, pursing his lips, before walking away.

I watched Jay shift slightly in his chair, watching the waiter disappear into the kitchens. “You know he’s going to spit in your food, right?” I asked, crossing my legs under the table and sighing.

Jay smirked and leaned his elbows on the small table. “You’re not going to ask about the accent?” he asked.

“You obviously want him to think you’re not as rich or educated as you are so you’re playing on stereotypes. I can’t exactly fault you for wanting to show a snooty waiter up,” I replied, taking the napkin folded very elegantly and spreading it out across my lap, just to give my eyes something to look at that wasn’t the man across from me.

“You think determination is attractive,” Jay declared, leaning back in his seat and continuing his observation of me.

“Ella told you that,” I said immediately, flicking my eyes from the cream material to the smug man. “Those are the exact words I told her after I broke up with my last boyfriend,” I expanded.

He shrugged, saying, “Maybe.” 

“When did you two get all this time to talk, anyway?” I asked, suspicion growing. “You were following me around the whole time I was at the art-”

“The whole time?” Jay interrupted, glancing at the table next to us disinterestedly.

Had I gone to the bathroom or something? No... “All of the time after you came up to... Oh.” I squinted. “You talked to her before you talked to me?”

“I’m sure she’d tell you what happened,” Jay said, smiling a kilowatt too brightly. I relaxed my eyes and twitched my lips down on the right side.

He’s a jerk, I realized, but the thought was irrelevant before I even thought it. I’d determined that at the art show.

Then I realized the flaw in that reasoning. I decided he was a jerk when I was in one of my moods, I should at least give him a chance. Ella was an okay judge of character, and if she thought we were compatible before I even met him, enough to give him my phone number, I needed to at least let him prove he was a jerk.

During my inner dialogue, Jay returned to watching the couple at the table to my left. It was the only table he could really see, since I took the seat with the view.

 “Do you know them?” I asked.

“They’re disgusting,” he said, his first words overlapping my last.

“That couple in particular?” I asked, following his gaze.

The woman’s dress hung off of her frame like a curtain around a skeleton in your high school anatomy class, but I wondered, with her lack of muscle or fat, if any other clothes would look any different. The man across from her matched her clothing in cost, but at least tripled her weight. He seemed taller, with wider shoulders and thick legs. His stomach bulged just a little, but his hair was strange. While the rest of the man screamed business executive, from the bags under his eyes to the expensive watch and the Blackberry he checked every thirty seconds, his hair was tied back in a rattail.

“Your dinners, sir, madam?” the waiter asked in a more monotonous tone than even any of my history professors possessed.

Jay leaned back in his seat. “Thanks, wow, thanks!” he said, slipping back into his accent. “I’m sure it’s just the meal the missus and I’re lookin’ for on our honeymoon.” The waiter plopped our meals in front of us. Well that was just not very dignified at all.

I held back the glare so ready to surface. “Gee, hon, I sure hope!” I tried my best at a southern accent, but considering the skeptical look Jay sent me and all the laughter I received from friends through the years in response to my attempts at accents, it wasn’t good.

The steak was thinner than my hand and just about as long. And I had skinny hands. Jay’s meal of some kind of meat with what looked like truffles around it, but it looked about as filling. A glance around the room showed that most of the meals were that size.

“I hope you’ll find it satisfactory,” the waiter said, walking away again. I took a sip of the wine for the first time.

“He’s a criminal,” Jay told me. A glance back toward Jay showed his eyes facing the man with the rattail.

“Tell me why you don’t like them,” I replied, resisting the urge to twist my hair into a braid. “That would make this a lot more interesting than most of my first dates.”

He tapped his fork against his plate. He was done. I cut out the second bite of my steak, deciding to eat while he talked.

“They’re so dull,” he said, turning to lean his back on the wall and kick his legs out into the aisle of the restaurant. 

It seemed those were the only words he had on the subject. Where I expected a lengthy diatribe on his thoughts on the matter, what he saw in these people that he hated so much, there was this childlike inability to say anymore.

It was a little hot.

“How’d you know what I liked to eat?” I asked, deciding not to comment on it.

Jay’s smile showed in my peripheral vision. “A man is allowed his secrets, isn’t he?” he asked as he fiddled with his own fork.

“Not when they’re creepy,” I mumbled. The snicker from across the table alerted me that, once again, I wasn’t as quiet as I thought I was.

I finished up my steak, deciding not to start up another line of conversation that would just end in me embarrassing myself in some way.

“You want to go get something real to eat?” Jay asked as the waiter strolled up to our table. The waiter let out some kind of disapproving monosyllabic sound and laid a slip of paper between my plate and Jay’s.

“Sure, where?” I asked, pushing back from the table to grab at Ella’s purse. 

“Burger King?” Jay suggested, taking out his own wallet and slapping down a credit card face down. Our waiter picked up the two slips.

“I would’ve tried to pay a little,” I argued, a little weakly. I didn’t doubt half of the total would’ve put me over my budget for eating out for the month.

“I ordered for you, you can pay at Burger King,” he said, but was there something else behind him paying for this? It seemed so practiced, not--

Stop. Guys probably didn’t like paying for things any more than I did. Money slipped through fingers like sand. That was all I was seeing.

“Thanks,” I said, smiling and touching his wrist on impulse. The way his eyes narrowed, flicked to my fingers, my elbow and then my face made me immediately curse my impulsiveness again. “Sorry,” I said, withdrawing, wondering if he was one of those ‘don’t touch’ people.

“Don’t worry, I was just thinking,” he said, pulling on that tight smile and stroking my wrist. I smiled back, wondering what kind of game I was playing and how I got into it.

This didn’t feel like any kind of dating I’d done before.

Jay took care of the tip and we left. I wondered as we took the few steps to the street for a cab if the restaurant exploded with whispers as we left, like a high school classroom after the teacher left to talk with a student, but decided not to turn back to look in favor of huddling deeper into my recently reclaimed jacket. At least the snow falling outside wasn’t sticking.

“Did you tip him well?” I asked as I slid into the seat of the taxi that immediately stopped for Jay. Jay slid in and whispered something to the driver.

“I tipped him 10%, which was quite a lot,” Jay said, straightening out his suit.

Strike one, after deciding to be fair to the guy: Rich.  
Strike two: Vain.

I just had one more strike to tally and then I could consider his second chance fairly given. I smiled to myself and looked out the window. Not even Ella could argue with that.

 “When do you take lunch?” Jay asked. “Actually, what do you do? You didn’t answer any of my questions last week and your friend only told me so much.”

“I used to work as an HR manager in a software business, but I got a little disgusted with the way things ran there and let my mouth get away from me, so now I’m unemployed,” I said, tapping the heel of my flat against the floor of the cab. “But I’ve got time to paint, which is nice.”

“Are you any good?” he asked.

“I don’t think so, but I’m not a very impartial person.” I almost invited him over to look at some of them before I realized that would either give him the idea I’d like him to come home with me tonight or that I definitely wanted another date. I pretended my lips were glued together.

 “Maybe I could see some of them sometime,” he said, sounding faintly amused.  “Maybe,” I said, trying to sound nice.

“Here’s good,” Jay told our driver, slipping a few notes into the driver’s palm. We stepped out of the taxi and started walking down the street. It was a little cold, but walking around in the cold was one of my quirks. I wondered if Ella told him or he just decided to save a few pounds by walking. Either way, I enjoyed it.

We ambled to the fast food restaurant in silence, although Jay did reach for my hand. I shrugged internally and slipped my fingers between his, squeezing them slightly. It was nice, walking with a man, hand in hand, with snow falling on our shoulders and melting...

Inside, we idled near the condiments and stared at the bright menu. “What’re you getting?” I whispered, leaning more closely to him than I would’ve had he not reached for my hand on the walk over.

“I’ll probably just get a burger,” he mumbled, squinting his left eye and sliding the left side of his face up.

“I was thinking chicken-”

“If you say salad,” he threatened, turning to look at my face.

 “I was going to say “nuggets”,” I finished, lowering my right eyebrow and stepping away from Jay. “I didn’t know lettuce offended you so much.”

“I just, I’m sorry?” he said, sounding more uncomfortable than I remember anyone sounding around me in a long time. “The last girl I dated, she was really interested in looking cute. It was... irritating.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I don’t-” I almost told him I didn’t care enough about what he thought of me to look cute. “Think cute could ever describe me,” I finished, hoping the disconnect wasn’t too apparent.

“You’re fishing for compliments now,” he dismissed, tugging on my elbow. “Are you ready, with your chicken nuggets?”

I nodded and we ordered. I gave the teenager behind the counter a twenty and we shuffled off to the side to wait for our food.

“This feels so normal,” he mused and I wondered if it was the kind of quiet where he thought I couldn’t hear him. I wasn’t used to being on this side of those comments.

“Are you more accustomed to sending out your PA to go get you junk food or something?” I asked, crossing my arms and leaning on the counter to my side.

“Kind of,” he replied, shoving his hands deep in his pockets and slouching again.

“Well? Come on, tell me about yourself. This is a first date. You’re supposed to tell me everything good about yourself and maybe exaggerate a little bit and then I do the same,” I replied, nudging him in the stomach with my elbow. He straightened up a little and blew out air, as if I did anything more than tap him.

“Is that what the first date really is? Gee, no wonder I was always confused,” he deadpanned, watching the teenaged girl with red hair gather our food.

“Yeah, well, now you know. Go on,” I said as he walked up to take the tray from the girl. He led me to one of the high tables where the stools sat us above everyone on the regular chairs.

“I’m the head of a corporation, I suppose you could say, but we do different types of work,” he said with a smile. A snake’s smile, but at least he enjoyed his work. “Now, isn’t it your turn?” 

“I’ve already told you all that stuff,” I dismissed, reaching over for my box of nuggets. I opened it and realized I forgot the ketchup.

I hopped off the stool and was about to ask if Jay wanted anything when I saw a mop of black curls run down the street. Of course, the mop of curls was attached to a tall man, who was followed by a shorter man who was Dr. John Watson...  
 I steadied myself on the stool and closed my mouth, surreptitiously checking to make sure I hadn’t drooled. “Would you like ketchup or a napkin or something?” I asked, clearing my throat. I smiled up at Jay, who wore a very bemused expression.

“No, no worries,” he said. I stumbled over to the ketchup and back to the table without any more incidents.

“So, who was that bloke you were about to run after?” Jay asked as I returned to my perch on the stool.

“Er, he’s this Internet phenomena,” I replied, “You might have heard of him, I guess, Sherlock Holmes?”

Jay cocked his head to the side, looking entirely too much like an actor to make me feel comfortable. “Nope.”

So that was how I spent that night. Talking about Sherlock Holmes with the man who would eventually send me running down the streets to Sherlock.


	3. Three

By the time we exited the fast food restaurant, the snow had stopped. But sometime during dinner it had started to stick, and vestiges of white stuck to the edges of the street and sidewalk. The bite of the cold lingered and must’ve discouraged the crowds, because we were pretty alone on the sidewalks. Every now and then a car would drive by.

“Did you have fun?” he asked, his hands in his pockets, shoes scuffing against the slushy sidewalk. I wondered why a man so concerned with his appearance would let his shoes get scuffed up. “I realize now that Xander’s was not the right place to take you on a date.”

“Impressive deduction,” I replied, bumping him a little with my shoulder and exhaling a short laugh. “No, I think it was fun. Only after the pretentious place though. You’re a pretty good first-dater.”

“I’ve practiced,” he said, looking over at me and fluttering his eyelashes. I laughed, a little louder than I wanted to, and blushed.

Fuck, I was starting to like this guy.

“So, would you happen to be free around my lunch hour?” he asked, returning his gaze to the sidewalk in front of us.

But he was really asking a completely different question. The question I didn’t know the answer to myself. Would I go out with him again?

“Er, yeah. I mean, I’ll have to push some stuff around at work, since I’m super busy and important there, but I should be able to make myself free once a week,” I joked, wincing mentally. I guess if I don’t know what I want, I just say the first joke-y thing that pops into my head.

“Great,” he replied, smirking a little. Cocky bastard expected that, did he?

“Actually, lunch-” I was about to say “is a bad time,” but he spun me around in front of him. Oh, we were already in front of my flat.

“I’ll see you on Wednesday, then,” he said, rolling his neck a little. He smiled before he leaned toward me, too quickly for me to try to figure out whether I wanted this, and, with three of his fingers curling to slide by the skin of my neck, his lips pressed against mine.

It was short. It was sweet. Okay, it wasn’t sweet, but everyone always says, “it’s short and sweet.” It was a kiss. But I wasn’t thinking any of these things then, I was thinking them when Ella quizzed me later. While his lips were against mine, all I was thinking was, “Holy shit how did it get to this.”

I wasn’t really into him.

“I’ll see you Wednesday, I’ll stop by around 12:30,” he said, his face still a little too close to mine for my comfort. I swallowed and nodded, my eyes still as wide as the second his lips brushed mine.

He spun around on one foot and walked away. I wished for three seconds that he’d fallen on ice, before I realized he just paid more money for the meal I ate in five minutes than I would make in the next month, even if I did have a job. I hopped up the stairs and jammed my key into the lock, turning, and slipping into the entry hallway.

I shut the door behind me and leaned against it, sighing. That wasn’t a complete disaster.

 

My mobile vibrated against the wood of my coffee table, leading me to wonder why I silenced my ringtone. It’s not like I had a job to be professional for, or classes or anything. A shirt from my high school speech team and a pair of purple shorts with tiny drawings of kittens completed my online job-searching ensemble. That morning I skipped coffee and the newspaper due to short funds. 

I set my laptop on the coffee table and grabbed my phone, settling back into my couch cushions. After unlocking my phone and navigating to messages, I realized it was Wednesday.

_Just left, should be at your door in five or ten. -J_

Ah, shit.

To my credit, by the time he knocked on the door, I was ninety percent ready. But… that’s only because he erred on the side of fifteen minutes.

I turned the handle of the door and let the door swing open on its own inertia while I rushed to the stairs. “I’ll be right back,” I tossed over my shoulder, already half way up the stairs. I heard him chuckle something about always being late, but I ignored it in favor of picking up my new (used) bag and jamming a notebook and my wallet inside. I looked in the mirror, realized my hair hadn’t introduced itself to a brush or comb that morning, and took care of that problem.

“Sorry, I-” I started, clambering down the stairs and rustling through my bag to make sure everything I needed was present.

“It’s fine,” Jay’s voice told me from the living room. I realized I left my laptop open after my terrifying text. My phone also lay on the couch, but it locked automatically...

I zoomed around the corner and looked through the doorway. Jay sat at my laptop, scrolling down whatever page I left open...

 Sherlock’s forums.

“You’ve got a bit more interest in this bloke than you mentioned,” Jay said, not removing his eyes from the laptop screen.

“You’re never completely honest on the first date,” I said, resigned. “You leave your freakiest traits until the other person likes you well enough to put up with them.”

“By that logic, shouldn’t you have been on time for our first two dates?” Jay asked, finally flicking his eyes to mine. I saw amusement rampant on his face instead of the jealousy or worry that I was insane/creepy that I expected.

“That’s not something I ever really control,” I muttered, shuffling over to the couch and leaning my orange and grey purse against the coffee table. It wasn’t really surprising that I’d left the thread I started weeks ago open, since that was where I spent most of my time online.

“You seem pretty into these crime things,” he said, using the cursor to highlight a post where I pointed out an unsolved crime in Lithuania that had an element in common-- the same strange symptoms followed by an unexplainable death-- with a similarly unsolved crime in New York.

“I’m interested,” I replied, curling one leg underneath me and hoping I could get out of spending twenty dollars on lunch by keeping him occupied with my strangeness. “I’m not going to understand these crimes, I’m not Sherlock Holmes, but there’s got to be some kind of serial crime commiter or something,” I wondered, turning the sides of my lips down in thought, eyes straying from both my laptop and the man next to me.

“That sounds a little farfetched,” he said in a light tone, leaning forward to lay my laptop on the coffee table. “You ready for lunch?”

Ah, no luck. “You bet,” I said, shoving my lips into a smile and hoping I wouldn’t have to deal with another sticky kiss situation.

 

 The cafe was on the opposite side of my apartment as my usual cafe with Lizzie and Neal, which was probably why I never stumbled upon it. It was equally quaint, though, with a few tables sprinkled about and soft music with friendly cashiers.

“We’ll both have BLTs,” he told the cashier, looking to me.

 “Um, I’ll have a burger, actually,” I decided quickly, mentally counting every dollar in my bank account. “And a water.” I slid my hand into my purse. 

“I’ll have my usual,” he said, sliding a card across the bar. I considered stopping it, but then I remembered my mental calculations. I’d pay for something later.

 

Wait, later?

“You can sit down, we’ll bring it out to you guys,” she told us, smiling distantly even as she turned around to talk to the two cooks in the kitchen.

Jay chose a table with both seats facing the entrance a little. I smiled into my hand, but quickly shooed the smile away. “So, how was work?” I asked, leaning on the table with my elbows. 

“As it usually is,” he said, sliding his eyes away from me and toward the couple in the corner. “Just a lot of paperwork, human resources stuff.”

“You take care of human resources stuff?” I asked, shifting in my chair and watching the cashier flirt with one of the cooks. I hoped she didn’t lean too far over the barrier and get her hair in my food. “For some reason I figured you were further up than that.”

“Oh, sometimes even the higher ups have to dabble in human resources,” he said, smiling. “I like it.”

“You would,” I grumbled, returning to watching the cashier’s blonde hair. He tapped his finger, bringing my gaze back to his now questioning face. I rolled my eyes and continued watching hair. “You probably enjoy lying right to people’s faces, or worse, telling them the truth in a way that they take for the way they want to hear it.” 

“Oh, I’m afraid we don’t do that in my company. We lay it all on the table,” he said.

“That’s what you all say,” I replied quietly, snatching a napkin from the dispenser and wiping at an imaginary stain on the table.

A few more minutes of struggling through small talk passed before the friendly blonde brought us our food. It was all hair-free, so I returned her smile.

“Why do you automatically order for me?” I asked after swallowing a few bites of my delectable burger.

“I’m used to it,” he said before taking a far more sophisticated bite of his own sandwich.

“You order for other people?” I asked, wondering if some alarms should be going off in my head.

“Yep,” he replied with a smile a little too wide.

“That’s strange,” I said, but that was as far as the topic was broached.

 

The streets outside were bustling with the lunch crowd. I remembered when I was part of that dressed business professionally, busy with work even during my break, coffee-grabbing crowd. I didn’t feel as different as I’d like. “Do you like your job?” I asked, wondering why I was so curious all the time about this guy I barely liked.

“Yes,” he answered immediately. “More than anything else I could be doing with my life, definitely.”

 “How’d you know?” I asked.

He grinned. “It was something I’d always wanted to do. Something I was good, no. I shouldn’t be humble, right? Second date? I’m awesome at my job.” While he stared forward to find points in the crowd for us to push through, I realized that I did like him. The passion he had for his job... I liked him. For better or worse. “In fact, there are only three or four people in the world that could catch me doing my job poorly,” he said.

He flashed me a smile that for a second worried me. But he was just talking about his job. I pushed it off and we crossed a street.

 “So, are you free this Friday night?” he asked, bumping my shoulder with his own. “I hear there’s a really good art--” 

“Yes,” I said, smiling at him. “I’m always free for art.”

“Great. I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said, taking my hand in his and lacing his fingers through mine.

“I’ll try to be ready by 7:05,” I replied, not even trying to hide my cheeky grin.

He snorted and rolled his eyes before he nudged me toward my stairs. I smirked a little and took the first step, turning away from him and dragging his hand with me.

“No goodbye?” he asked, tugging on our hands.

“I was going to wave-” I started, turning around.

The stair and my sneakers made me just a little taller than him. Not that that would discourage him from pulling me down by my neck and kissing me again.

This time I knew I wanted it. Not because I was in love with him, per se, but because he made me laugh and he was kind of cute. Those are the two reasons I used, anyway, to shield myself from the knowledge that, for some reason, I was starting to like him.

His hand rested fully on the back of my neck, his lips pressed against mine, and my eyes closed this time. My own right hand ventured out, smacking into his chest instead of his shoulder, where I stabilized myself and ran my hand up to his neck.

 We pulled back after a few seconds. I cleared my throat and retracted my hand, which he was not quite as courteous in doing. “I guess I should-”

“Yeah,” he said, his eyes focused on my lips. “Just,” he muttered, before pulling me back to kiss him again.

I wondered if he was a little more invested in this relationship than I was, but kissed him back nonetheless.

 

The art gallery surprised me. Not the content, not the crowd, not going to an art gallery with someone to talk to, even if they really weren’t interested in the content, but that I found myself enjoying more and more of Jay’s more jackass-y traits.

It wasn’t that much, but after two to three dates a week for seven weeks... The kisses were getting hotter and longer, they were turning into things that were much more than just kisses, and the feelings were getting less reluctant...

 Jay was wearing me down.

 

“Lane, what’re you doing?” Jay asked, eyes honed in on his phone’s touch screen. He smirked and flicked his finger around.

The restaurant was loud, some kind of sports joint. Every weekend when Jay and I went out, he took me somewhere completely different. He said he was trying to figure out what worked best, but I think he just got bored. The ice skating rink was a strange place to eat shrimp, but when Jay seemed so bent on throwing money away, I couldn’t do much. (I didn’t even like shrimp.)

“I’m drawing,” I replied, scoffing. The tables were covered in white paper and crayons were supplied in plastic kids’ cups with brightly colored animals. Did they expect me to just sit there and stare at the men kicking a ball up and down grass on the monitors?

“You’re scribbling,” Jay corrected, twisting one side of his mouth down at the cell phone before flicking a few more screens away and shutting it off. He shoved the phone into his pocket.

“So?” I asked, adding a face to the egg on the plate I just drew.

“You only scribble cute little things when you’re upset,” he elaborated, leaning his elbows on the table and widening his eyes at me. “And breakfast? You don’t even like breakfast.”

“Scrambled eggs are cute,” I grumbled, adding shocked eyebrows to the face.

“What are you thinking about?” he asked, stilling my hand with his own. I dropped the blue crayon to the table and twisted my hand to be holding his.

“I’ve just-”

“Here’s your dinner!” our waitress, Fiona, shouted over the cheer of some men in the booth behind us. “I hope you enjoy!”

Our hands detached to make room for our plates in front of us. Jay nodded at her and I smiled a little.

Over our meal, I managed to distract him by prodding him about his job. He never really said what kind of business he worked for and I knew making him dance around that subject would take him a while.

“What were you going to say earlier?” he asked, pushing the remnants of his pasta around his plate. From the scrunched up position of his face, the pasta was not up to his demanding standards. Since it was a sports joint… I didn’t really know what he expected.

I took a deep breath and pushed away my plate. The chips weren’t that good anyway. “I think we should break up,” I said, tracing the edges of the plate I drew for my scrambled eggs.

I tried not to look at Jay, but after a whole minute of no reply, I had to make sure he hadn’t spontaneously left for the bathroom or something. He was still there.

He didn’t look heartbroken, which really would have surprised me after the time we’d spent together, but more like a plan had just fallen through. His eyes were relaxed, not widened or squinted, but they darted from my shoulder to my fingers to my hair to the collar of my shirt.

“You’re doing this on an impulse,” he said, leaning back in his booth. “But you’ve got reasons.”

“Yes, what girl doesn’t have reasons to break up with her boyfriend-thing?” I asked, a little upset.

 “Name them,” he told me, setting his fork down in the plate.

“I’ll just take these. Would you guys like your check together, or separate?” Fiona asked, picking up our plates. 

“Together,” Jay said.  “Separate,” I said at the same time. Jay glared me down.

“Together,” he finally resolved, smiling more charmingly at Fiona than he ever did at me.

“I’ll be right back with that,” she said, smiling back, but casting me a questioning look.

What kind of girl wouldn’t want a nice man like Jay to pay for her dinner? I could see the question running through her head. A crazy one.

“So what are your reasons?” he asked, setting his hands on the table.

“I’m not going to tell you,” I argued, still surprised his glare got me to back down from paying for my own meal. “That’s not something you-” 

“Lane, you brushed upon it earlier. We’re not just girlfriend and boyfriend. We never agreed to date, it just sort of happened. Since we’re not actually dating, these social norms you picked up somewhere don’t exactly apply to us, do they? Just let me know why you’re breaking up with me so I can tell you why you shouldn’t,” he said, sitting up straighter.

“Jay, I’m sorry. But I’ve got to go before you can talk me out of this,” I said, standing up and slipping my arms through the sleeves of my windbreaker. I leaned down to kiss him on the cheek, but his hand wrapped around the back of my head and brought my lips to his.

His lips against mine reminded me of all of the reasons I shouldn’t break up with this strange man. I also realized that those arguments by far outnumbered the arguments for breaking up with him. His other hand slid down my arm and gripped my hand, squeezing blood and pain into the fingers.

“Jay,” I muttered, breaking away. “Jay, I’m sorry.”

And I walked away.


	4. Four

“Laaane,” Ella groaned, digging her bare heels into the wood of our coffee table. “You were happy with this guy!”

“Oh come on,” I replied, burying deeper into my voluminous hoodie. “He was weird. You know it and the only time you talked to him was before that first art gallery opening.”

“I don’t know that, I just know that some things you noticed were kind of strange,” Ella said.

 “During times like this I’m not surprised your dad was a politician and your mom a lawyer,” I replied, sighing.

“Lane, Neal and Lizzie liked you guys going out a lot.”

“Ell, it was my romance, so it was my decision,” I held tight to my guns.

“Give me the reasons, then,” she said, taking the large pillow from behind her and hugging it close to her chest.

“One, I didn’t like him to begin with,” I said, flicking up my index finger.

“Invalid, you like him now.”

 “Fine. One, he had all those mysterious absences. ‘Oh, I’m out of town for a week to do business.’ What kind of business? ‘Important business.’”

“Maybe he’s a secret agent?” Ell volunteered, leaning toward me as her face lit up. “What if you just broke up with England’s number one secret agent?!”

“Then good for me. Dating a secret agent would be terribly exhausting,” I decided, rolling my eyes.

“You broke his heart,” Ella said softly. 

“Mariella, quit being ridiculous,” I said, standing up and walking to the kitchen. “It was two months, at most I put a dent in his heart.”

 

Two weeks later, I was working from home for some shady man who wanted a cleaner website. I didn’t ask what his website was before he wired some money through for me to begin. The fact that he gave me money before I started working worried me a little, but I put that aside and pulled up his website on my computer.

Chad’s Dogges, read the title. Should I ask him if he did that on purpose? I wrote a little note on a post it and continued through the page. Why he wanted someone to work on the page, I wasn’t sure, since it didn’t seem that anyone besides immediate family would ever look at the page. I shrugged and continued through the page.

The mailman’s heavy footsteps interrupted my work focus, but I made a cup of tea and sank deeper into my trance. By the time Ella got home from after school tutoring, I had plenty of suggestions and ideas.  “One of my kids threw up all over me today,” Ella mumbled, tossing some mail on the table in our kitchen. “I had to change into my emergency dress, but I still smelled the vomit all day.”

 I shoved my laptop from me, rubbing my eyes and wincing. “Ell, why didn’t you just take the teenagers? They might not have any control over their mouths, but at least they have more control over their bodily functions.”

Ell just frowned at me. “I think most people get vomited on, no matter what job they pick,” she said, still frowning. “Can’t you just say, ‘aww, I’m sorry, Ell,’ and pat me on the back? I don’t even ask for a hug, ‘cause-”  I walked over and hugged her. “I’ll take my chances of smelling,” I said. “It’s not like anyone smells me anyway. Awwww, I’m sorry, Ell,” I said dutifully, patting her on the back anyway.

“Thanks,” she said, smiling at me a little. “Things like that give me hope that you’re either not a robot or you’re assimilating,” she said, walking up the stairs to her room.

“Assimilation, definitely,” I called back, wandering over to the table and sorting through the mail. Bills for me, bills for Ell. Junk for me, junk for current resident, junk for Ell. A few real letters for Ell, a real letter for me... But it was a really thick envelope. I ripped the triangle up and pulled out a greeting card.

My mom and dad sometimes would send a detached greeting card with their names stamped on the bottom if a particularly important holiday passed, but this was March... I flipped the back of the card to face the table and saw a strange illustrated cat hanging from a tree. “Just catching up with you!” it said, with a grin on its face. I opened the card.

The print read, “I hope all’s well!” but the magazine and newspaper cut letters barely left that text visible.

Creepy stalker print read, “Maybe you should have.”

 Yeah, that’s all. Then there was a picture of a walrus. I squinted my eyes, turned the card upside down, and looked at the back and into the envelope. I figured it was from Neal or Lizzie and a bad joke I didn’t get, so I threw it away and went upstairs to tell Ell about my silly dog site job.

 

The letters kept coming. I started recognizing the heft of the envelopes and feeding them to the paper shredder that fascinated Ell and I when we first bought it.

After a few months of seven notes altogether, I decided maybe I should read another one. The envelope ripped open as easily as before, but this time the envelope contained a letter, not a greeting card. The letter was flawlessly written in calligraphy, on paper that felt expensive and with ink that didn’t look cheap either. 

“Elaine Tavish,  
Do you think shredding my words makes them any less potent? Do you think anyone less than that Sherlock Holmes that you so admire and model yourself after could protect you now?  
Maybe you think the man who brushed your connection of the Lithuania and New York crimes off isn’t actually a threat...  
No matter what you think, you’re going to be proven wrong.  
JM”

I shoved the letter in my pocket and searched my memory. Yeah, 221 B Baker Street. That’s where I needed to go.

I searched the fastest pedestrian route online. I needed a run. 

I shoved my legs through a blue pair of jogging shorts and pulled the letter out of the pockets of my sweatpants and crammed it down my sports bra. My running shorts didn’t have pockets and it would be less likely to fall out of my bra, anyway. I glanced around the entrance of the flat before grabbing my keys and phone and taking off out the door, slamming it after me.

Luckily, at ten in the morning on a Thursday, most of the streets between my road and Baker Street were very lightly traveled. And the people who were traveling them stepped out of my way more often than not. 

I watched the pavement in front of me, trying to pay attention to street names and pedestrians and my thoughts. Jay was... Some kind of criminal? Probably? Why was he more important than I thought?

Finally, a door read 221 B. I swallowed and took the stairs, pushing the doorbell a bit longer than necessary. I licked my lips and tried to stop my foot from tapping.

The door didn’t open, and no sounds of footsteps or someone calling out to wait made it through the door. I turned around. I would try back later, maybe, if I didn’t talk myself out of it.

That moment where I was turning away from the door to step down was, of course, the same moment the door swung open. “Oh, I’m so sorry, deary. I was in the middle of dusting and I thought that one of the boys would get the door,” said the woman behind the door, who did look very flustered.

“I was looking for Sherlock Holmes?” I asked, hoping he was one of “the boys” she was talking about.

“Oh, come in, come in. He’s right upstairs,” she said, shooing me in through the door. I steeled myself for whatever was to happen and took the stairs.

“-- toes in the bathtub!” a voice cut through the door. I stopped at the doorway, hand poised to knock or open the door. I wasn’t sure which was appropriate, since I had already knocked downstairs, but I didn’t want to walk in on someone half naked or anything?

“Come in,” intoned a different, deeper and calmer, voice.

I smiled a little, glad that question at least was answered, before twisting the door knob and stepping into a room that might have even been messier than my thirteen year old self’s room.

“Sherlock Holmes?” I asked, scratching the skin behind my left ear. In the center of the mess of the room, which included, but was not limited to, books, loose papers, and a few strange momentos, sat a tall man with dark curly hair. Closer to the small kitchen stood a shorter blond man who was in the middle of gesticulating in what seemed, from the expression on his face and the first voice, like a pretty unhappy way.

“Yes,” said the man sitting down. His eyes raked down my body, from the roots of my hair to the scuffs on the sides of my sneakers. “You’re an unemployed artist, you’ve been worried about something for a few months. Probably a stalker. You live-”  

“Sherlock,” the blond man who was probably Dr. Watson or Sherlock’s boyfriend, whined.

“-- with a teacher. You’re the eldest child in your family and you don’t care nearly enough about your appearance,” he finished up. “You did something with maths in college, probably accounting.”

“Er, sort of,” I said, tapping the toes of my right foot on the ground behind my left shoe. “Anyway, can we get to the things I’m worried about?” 

“You’re not going to ask how he did it?” John asked, moving toward the seats in the center of the room with a glass of tea.

“I’ve got a few more pressing concerns,” I admitted, considering asking him anyway.

Sherlock deflated, cementing my decision not to ask. “What’s your dull problem?” he asked, sinking into the couch. “Missing jewels? Disappearing boyfriend?”

“More like reappearing ex-boyfriend,” I mumbled to myself, turning around to fish the letter out of my bra. “I’ve been getting letters, but after the first one, I just shredded them. I got four just this week, so I decided to read this one. It’s...”

Sherlock already snatched the letter and finished reading it, snapping his eyes up to mine. “JM, who is that? You know him.” 

I swallowed. That immediate reaction was not the reaction I expected. I figured he’d laugh me off. Why didn’t he laugh me off?

“Jay Moore?” I said, taking the hem of my t-shirt between the index and thumb fingers of both hands and stabbing the fingernail of my index finger into the fabric.

“Jim Moriarty?” John offered quietly, watching Sherlock with a very troubled face.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Lithuania and New York?”

I didn’t blush often, and when I did it was normally more of a pink dusting than a tomato red spread. This was definitely more on the tomato red side of the spectrum, however.

I bit my lip. “Have you read any of the threads on the Sherlock Holmes forum?” I asked, walking over to an open laptop.

 “No,” Sherlock sniffed. I rolled my eyes with John.

“Well, I started this thread a while ago with some patterns I saw in crimes...” The laptop was unlocked and on some news article, so I just opened a new tab and pulled up the forum and my thread.

“Patterns?” Sherlock sounded a lot more interested now.

“I started reading the papers and news articles online more closely once I quit my job, and I saw some patterns in unsolved crimes. So when I found out about you two, I figured this was the best place to put them,” I explained as Sherlock ripped the laptop from my grasp and started tapping the down button and reading the text more quickly than I figured possible.

 “He’s grabby, we’re working on that,” John explained, offering me a seat. “Are you okay?” The letter was in his hand.

“Yes, I’m fine,” I said, smiling a little.

 “Some of these are actually a little intelligent,” Sherlock mused under his breath. John glared at him.

“It’s fine,” I said, patting John’s arm. “Most of my friends are much more disparaging than that of my hobby.”

“Keep on like that and he’ll think it’s okay,” John replied, turning his eyes to me and smiling.

“I feel like we’ve adopted a child,” I said, liking John already.

“That’s what being his friend is like,” John admitted, leaning back in his seat a little.

“How did you meet Jay Moore?” Sherlock asked, his voice strained.

 “He started talking to me at an art gallery opening,” I said, losing the easy feeling I had while joking with John. This seemed a lot more serious than I was grasping.

“James Moriarty is the one man that has ever outmatched Sherlock,” John said, seeing something in my face that alerted him that I felt like I was missing something. “This man is the head of some huge criminal organization. He’s... the Sherlock of bad guys.”

The room and its mess slid out of focus for a sharp second. My ex-boyfriend was a criminal mastermind? When the room and its occupants came back into focus, they were arguing.

“Your flatmate is in trouble,” John said, turning from Sherlock. “Call her, tell her not to open the door for anyone but you, okay? Then go and get her, come back here, and we’ll keep you guys safe until we figure out where he’s staying and how to get to him.”

“Why did he break up with you if he was just going to stalk you?” Sherlock asked, standing up with a flourish and clearing a path to pace through. By walking through the mess, of course.

“I broke up with him,” I said, half offended he assumed Jay broke up with me and half resigned.

Sherlock stopped theatrically in the middle of a step.

“Making an enemy out of Moriarty was probably not a good idea,” John spoke up, watching his flatmate.

“I’ll call Ella,” I said, patting my legs for my phone. I remembered it was down my bra with my keys and turned around to fish it out.

“Hey, Ella? Today was a half day, right? Are you home? Good. I’ll be there in a few minutes...”

 

The last turn before my street was a relief. After Sherlock and John’s reactions, I felt like Jay and five men in wife beaters were about to jump out and chloroform me. I chuckled to myself a little at my imagination before taking my eyes off of my shoes to look at the stairs leading to my flat...

Where Jay leaned against the bannister, smiling winningly. I thought about turning around and running, I thought about running at him, I thought about a lot of things. Until his right hand swept back the bottom right flap of his jacket and tapped the handle of a grey metal gun.

“Nice to see you again,” he purred, smiling in a way that didn’t look like the Jay Moore I got to know. I swallowed.


	5. Five

His fingers wrapped around my right shoulder, just a degree too rough to be relaxing. I steeled my mouth so I wouldn’t wince, trying to focus on the street outside the window I was peeking out of. The heavy, musty maroon curtain was nudged aside by one of my shaking fingers in a way I hoped, for my life, didn’t attract attention.

“Remember when you call to convince her not to let nosy John Watson realize she knows where you are,” Jay whispered from behind me, bringing his chin to rest on his right hand on my right shoulder.

My attention shifted back to the street. Right across from the dirty window I perched behind stood the flat my best friend Ella and I shared for the past two years. Jay’s hand slid from my shoulder and his arms slipped under mine, flicking my phone to a better position in his right hand to manipulate it. He unlocked it and clicked on Ella’s contact just as John Watson rounded the corner. I breathed out, a little more forcefully than I meant to. 

“Be very persuasive, darling. Wouldn’t want to have to blow your head off so early in the game,” he breathed, flicking his tongue out to briefly lick my earlobe. I took my phone from his hand and watched John hop up the stairs and knock on the door. Jay’s hands clasped around my middle.

“How do you know what he’s doing?” I asked quietly, trying to keep my voice steady. Maybe that would keep me from freaking out since my exboyfriend was apparently a criminal mastermind interested in kidnapping me.

“How do I know that you told Ella not to let anyone in but yourself? Or that John left a few minutes after you? Or that John and Ella don’t know each other?” he asked, tapping my stomach with one of his hands. “Oh, darling, don’t think I was ever above bugging your phone.”

That didn‘t explain everything at all. “Okay, fine, but how do you know he’ll tell her to go check for his picture on his blog?” I asked, as John quit talking to my door and leaned against it, furrowing his brow.

“Don’t miss your cue,” Jay sing-songed, tapping my phone.

I woke up my phone and tapped the picture of the green phone, bringing the phone up to my ear.

Maybe if I hadn’t gone to Sherlock and John that morning, that day would’ve ended differently for me. Maybe Ella and I would’ve gotten to watch the marathon of Doctor Who we wanted to get in before her work schedule ramped up, or maybe I would’ve met a charming man to knock me off my feet and marry me. 

Or maybe my problem goes back further. To early April, when I got the first of the notes. At first I convinced myself the notes were for Ella, but I knew who they were for. If I thought they were meant for Ella, I would’ve rushed her down to the police, shoved her into their arms and demanded protective custody immediately. No, I knew they were for me.

It didn’t matter when I made the wrong move that decided that day, though. Because I learned pretty quickly that every move-- even not moving-- was a move Jay already took into consideration and provided for. 

“Lane! Where are you?” Ella’s voice burst through my phone.

 “Ell, whatever you do, do not tell John I called you, okay?” I headed her off, worried to lose this game or my life before it even started. “I’m... Well, I’m across the street. But. Jay has a gun. Against my head. So, that is John at the door, you can let him in.” John turned away from the door of my flat, causing me to duck behind the curtain. “But leave your phone on the table by the front door with me on the line. If you tell John where I am... Jay’s going to blow my head off, okay? I’ll die, and it won’t be your fault, but... I believe Sherl-”

“Just tell her what she needs to know, got it?” Jay whispered into my free ear as his right hand dug its nails into my stomach. I took a steadying breath.

“Lane? Are you... Oh, God, okay. I won’t tell. But be careful, okay?” Ell asked, and I could hear the tears in her voice. I could see the nails she painted this morning clutching the phone, while her other hand pressed against her mouth.

“Please, Ell, don’t tell John,” I whispered, trying not to let my emotions get to me here. “Okay, he won’t believe you’re looking for the picture online for much longer. Remember, just put the phone by the door and don’t tell him. I’ll be fine.”

“Love you, Laney,” Ella whispered. Rustling noises took the place of her voice. She was probably moving the junk mail so she’d have a stable place to put her phone.

“Love you, too,” I replied, just as quietly. I moved the curtain back again, making sure John wasn’t watching.

The muzzle of the gun Jay only flashed earlier caressed my temple, brushing the skin and few strands of hair that laid there. “You can call me Jim, you know,” he purred as we watched the door open. Ella’s eyes flashed to the window before she ushered John in. After making sure he wasn’t watching, she blew me a kiss. I dropped the curtain as she shut the door behind her.

“I don’t think of you as Jim,” I murmured as the gun dropped to sweep across the curve of my neck.

Jay’s hand, tentatively resting on the curve of my neck as he leaned in to kiss me, for the first time. His lips, moving softly against mine, as his other hand rested on my hip...

“Why are you doing this?” I asked as he moved away from me, presumably sheathing his gun somewhere on his being. He grabbed my arms before I could turn around, took my mobile, and tied my wrists together with rope. A bit old fashioned in the times of handcuffs, duct tape and those plastic ties that hurt like bitches.

“Oh, he’ll figure it out,” Jay told me evenly, patting my shoulder.

“Yeah, but--” 

“Sorry, darling, no time,” he said, and then a rag pressed itself over my mouth. I held my breath and went limp. He chuckled and kept the rag over my mouth. I started panicking. Maybe this man I dated was every bit as dangerous as John and Sherlock thought he was, maybe I was really astoundingly dumb—did I take a breath?--, maybe I deserved to...

Cold. I was cold. And my arms, under my body, tied together, were not helping the ache I always developed in my shoulder. I shifted, moaning and fluttering my eyes. Where the fuck had that headache come from?

There wasn’t any light in my room, which wasn’t that much of a surprise, since I couldn’t sleep with the slightest bit of light. But the cold was strange. I always slept under a huge comforter.

Jay leaning against the handrail that ran up the side of my flat’s stairs, smiling at me. That was... earlier? Yesterday? 

“Come with me and I won’t blow your flat up with dear Ella in it. I might not shoot you, too!” he’d enthused, wrapping his left hand around my right elbow in a way he knew bothered me. His other hand raised his coat just enough for me to again see the handle of the handgun again. I shook off his hand and walked with him, across the street, into the apartment, to the window... Where he explained just what would happen in the next ten minutes.

“You look positively thrilled, Laney,” Jay said as the door opened, letting in an entirely too bright stream of light. He flicked the light switch near the door and shut the door behind him.

“I’m so glad you took the time out of your busy schedule of world wrecking to come visit your ex, is all,” I mumbled, shoving the panic down. It was the same panic that made me take that breath. It hadn’t helped me then, it wouldn’t help… Dear God I was going to die.

“Oh, it was nothing,” he mused, strolling to a desk I hadn’t noticed. The chair that sat in front of the desk was definitely the same chair from my room in my flat. It was a wheeled chair with blue fabric and cushioning covering the part actually sat in, with black armrests that refused to slide up. Jay pulled it out and sat down facing away from me, looking around the room. “You should call me Jim.”

“No, I should call you Moriarty,” I bit out, standing up and walking towards him. He finally looked at me, but instead of returning the glance I knelt down in front of my chair. “And you should call me Tavish, but I doubt either of us will do as we should.” I brought my head closer to the blue fabric covering the back of the seat, wishing my hands were free. It was a different chair-- no barbeque stains.

He pursed his lips in a frown. “Tavish is not nearly beautiful enough to call you,” he said in his deep voice. The one that always sent shivers down my back. I held the shivers back. Not the time, hormones.

“Yeah, Moriarty’s a bit too beautiful for you,” I replied, turning around and heading back to the bed. I sat on the edge, trying to stretch out my right shoulder without digging the rope too deeply into my skin.

He spun around in the chair to face me, his legs spread apart, leaning back in the chair and folding his hands across his lower abdomen and staring at me.

“Look, how about you stop calling me Lane and I’ll call you Jim?” I suggested.

He started to spin back and forth for a few seconds, maybe a minute. He licked his lips, and twitched his mouth a little. “Fine.” It was almost as if he knew what I was trying to do. Associate him with everyone I didn’t like who called me Elaine. He wasn’t Sherlock bleeding Holmes though. He stood up and skipped around me. A click, then something cold swiped between my wrists. My arms slid apart. 

“Why am I here, then, Jim?” I asked, smiling up at him nicely and trying to set the stage for a more companionable captor/captee relationship. I rubbed my wrists, they didn’t hurt as much as I expected them to. A little red, though.

“You can figure it out, I’m sure,” he said smoothly, gliding to the door. “In the meantime, there are a few surprises in the room, if you’re interested in finding them.” He opened the door and it shut behind him before I could even grumble a sarcastic goodbye.

The room was pretty basic. White walls, four of them, no windows, a twin bed with green satin sheets-- not the most basic, I realize-- and a beat up desk with a very nice chair. The desk, however, had three regular square-ish drawers with a longer rectangular one over the legs of whoever sat at the desk. I decided the drawers were my best shot at finding the surprises. 

The long one was empty, which was strange, because that’s where I kept all of my surprises in my desk at home. The three other drawers were filled to the brim, actually. The top one was crammed with books, some I’d read, others I hadn’t. The second had ten different sketch books and some notebooks. And the last drawer had colored pencils, graphite, some water color materials, and some paint and brushes. I stared at the arts supplies for a few minutes before staring wide eyed and open mouthed at the door. Then I returned to staring at the art supplies.

“What the fuck, Jim?”

 

I was about to pound on the door and ask Jay for some fucking food when I realized I hadn’t even tried the door yet. I stumbled to the door and turned the knob. The door opened without a squeak. I would’ve thrown my head against the wall if I wasn’t feeling like I’d already done that a few times too many.

That’s when I realized exactly where I was. Holy shit, he took me to his flat? 

I stomped my way to the kitchen, ripped open the fridge and grabbed the milk. The expiration date was a week after the day I broke up with him in March. If it was still the day of my kidnapping, the date was May 24th.

“I haven’t been here in a while,” Jay, or Jim, stated. I turned around. He hopped onto the counter, swinging his feet back and forth and bracing himself with a hand on each side of him on the counter.

“I’d say. Do you have any real food?” I asked, shutting the fridge and pouring the milk down the sink. I tossed the open empty container at my captor. “Or are you getting delivery?”

“Have you tried out the supplies yet?” Jay asked. I sighed and turned to rifle through the cupboards.

 “I’m afraid I’ve been too busy worrying about you starving me to death,” I replied, realizing there was nothing in any of the cupboards to rifle through. “Which is a very good question, actually,” I mumbled to myself.

“I’ll get Chinese. It’s not as if it’s hard to remember what you liked,” he replied, sighing himself. “‘I’ll have the usual!’” he mocked in what I hoped was the highest tone in his arsenal.

“Um, my voice is not that high,” I argued with the only part of his performance I could.

His eyes widened as his brows went up. “You sure, honey bunches?”

“I thought you were going to call me Elaine,” I commented, leaning against the counter opposite him. “No cutesy nicknames.” He didn’t even call me things like that when we dated. Thankfully. 

“You said not to call you Lane. You didn’t say anything about honey bunches.”

I retreated to my ‘room’ to mess with some of the supplies he gave me. I just hoped he’d order soon, because light headed was not a way to survive this James Moriarty character.

After a few quick drawings, there was rustling by the front door and voices. I sat my pencil on top of a sketch of Sherlock, whose cheekbones had not really been done justice on the news or in the papers, and opened my door. I walked down the hallway and turned into the living room, where Jay was juggling a few bags and shutting the door with his foot. I leaned against the wall to watch.

I had a lot of questions, but I decided to ask, “Why’d you buy so much?” first.

He grunted. “What do you think we’ll be eating for the next few days?” he asked, walking around the couch and into the kitchen. He let the bags drop. A few fortune cookies spilled onto the counter and then the floor. I picked them up and ripped the plastic of one, shoving half of the treat into my mouth and skimming over the fortune on the slim slip of paper in my hand.

‘Make two grins grow where there was only a grouch before.’ I smirked and shoved it in my pocket, eating the other half.

“What did it say?” Jay asked. He was watching me the whole time, I realized. “Something about the pleasures that lay ahead?”

“Nooo,” I replied, narrowing my eyes at him and lowering a side of my mouth. “More like ‘Call a construction company for many troubles lay ahead.’”

“Doesn’t really make sense,” he dismissed, walking around the island and behind me. I thought about turning around, but decided it would make me look afraid. “You’re still only okay at lying.” His hand slithered into my pocket and drew out the slip of paper. It wasn’t worth fighting about, so I just stepped closer to the island and began drawing boxes out of the bags.

“Not that interesting, was it?” I asked when Jay stepped closer to me. “Sometimes people-”

  “You are impulsive, Elaine, and sometimes you just do things because you feel like it.” Jay stepped closer to me, sliding the hand that took the slip of paper out of my pocket back into my right front pocket. “That’s one of the reasons you broke up with me, wasn’t it?”

I cleared my throat and opened a carton of the Chinese food. “Suppose so,” I replied, fishing through the paper bags for chop sticks.

“You looked every bit as surprised as I was when you said it,” he said, withdrawing his hand and walking around the island and picking up his own carton.

 I glared at my rice and chicken instead of the man across the counter from me. “Most people don’t plan out every single action of their life meticulously, Mr. World Class Criminal,” I retorted. Weakly.

He smiled and all I could think of was that shark from Finding Nemo. “Most people don’t break up with their boyfriend on a whim. We’re two extremes, sweet cake.” 

“That wasn’t the only reason,” I mumbled between mouthfuls of rice.

 “What else was there, then?” I was a fool to think he wouldn’t hear me. I tore my eyes away from my container of rice to try to work something out of the puzzle that was Jay’s face. Jim’s face.

“You know you were my longest relationship.” 

“Bullshit, we went out for thre--” His face screwed up, his eyes narrowing, even as his hands tore open his own carton of food and pair of chopsticks. “Afraid of commitment? And I didn’t see it.”

“You’re not a machine, Jim,” I grumbled, eyeing the remaining four fortune cookies. “Everyone misses things, even Sherlock, probably.” Although the accuracy of his observations in regards to me, at least, was terrifying.

His eyes narrowed more. “He deduced you, didn’t he? What did he find?” he asked, starting to eat whatever he ordered. He always ordered something different, so I gave up trying to name all of them a while back.

“Unemployed, wannabe artist, he guessed I was some kind of hard maths major, though, not business, living in a flat with a teacher, and a little too uncaring about my appearance. He thought I was an eldest child, not only,” I said, keeping my eyes away from him. Sherlock had also deduced a few other things that weren’t pertinent.

“Did you ask how he knew?” Jim was leaning on his elbows over the island. Sherlock really intrigued him. He was paying me more genuine attention than I could remember getting after our first date. Not that I’d noticed till now.

“Nope, I was a bit too frantic about these creepy notes,” I replied, turning my head to the right and looking at him out of the sides of my eyes.

He slouched back in his barstool. “You had dried paint on your thumb, but it was cheap, so he knew you weren’t successful. If you were employed you wouldn’t have been home around eleven in the morning on a Thursday,” he trailed off, chomping on some food as his eyes roved my old t-shirt and shorts. “You should really buy some new clothes,” he finally said.

“I like this outfit,” I argued, shifting my feet. 

“Your shirt has three holes in it and you’ve had those shorts since before we met.” 

“Why’d you come to that art gallery? It had to be to meet me, but why meet me?” I asked, putting down the carton of food, suddenly not light headed or hungry at all.

He smirked. “Ooooh,” he sang, putting down his own meal. “The girl finally links some dots. It’s strange that this took you so long, when you put some other dots together very easily. Without effort, it would seem.” 

“What are you talking about?” I asked, taking my bottom lip between my teeth. Jim’s eyes shifted to my lips before he smiled. I let go of the flesh and raised my hands. “Well?”

“PatternsGalore, very interesting screenname,” he whispered, eyes locked on mine to catch every reaction my face displayed.

It felt so long ago, coming up with that screen name. I was afraid my usual ones would be recognized by my friends and leave me open to ridicule, but if they’d been on the Sherlock Holmes forums in the first place, I suppose they’d be unlikely to criticize me for doing the same. At the time, I felt the need for a very impersonal screen name. 

I never posted much, mostly read. For a little bit, I’ll admit, I had a crush on the self-proclaimed consulting detective. Smart guys were always my weakness. When I went to the forums, I lurked a little before getting a screen name to talk to a few people whose opinions I found interesting… 

Things steamrolled, and one day I realized I could post the strange patterns I found in the papers and on internet news sites.

I blinked as many times as I could and swallowed. Then my blinking evened out and my breathing returned to normal, although I’d not noticed it deviating. “You. You spoke to Mary that day just because you… Were trying to distract me?”

“Kinda!” he chirped, his eyes still darting around my face, from my cheekbones to the downward twitch in my mouth to the wandering of my eyes.

“Why else, then?” I asked, resigned to the fact that I couldn’t figure out his motivations just by the fold of his jacket or the mud on his trainers.

“For fun,” he said in his deep voice.

I swallowed again, nodding and looking away. Calculating things that happened in our relationship. Wondering why I felt so hurt.

“Glad you finally… Well, you didn’t tell me, I suppose. Glad I finally realized there was something fishy.” I stood up and walked away from the takeout food, wandering back into my bedroom and pushing the chair under the knob. I doubted he would try to walk in anytime soon or that if he wanted in, a chair would dissuade him. It made me feel better.

I flipped through some of my drawings, scoffing at John’s half-finished jumper and making myself frown at a sketch of Jim leaning against the bannister at the bottom of my stairs. I threw the sketch book back on the table and sat on my bed, bringing my knees up to my chin and hugging them.


	6. Six

“It’s interesting how quickly you took to them,” Jim murmured, his voice deep next to my ear. I smiled and shifted a little closer, hoping he’d shut up so I could grab a few more minutes of sleep. “I didn’t even think you wanted to kiss me that first time, but after one meeting you’re drawing jumpers in detail and shading their eyes like you’ve known them for years.”

Blinking the white room into focus reminded me this was not a normal wake up call. “How’d you get in?” I croaked, more to give me time to regain my full brain than of any curiosity.

He walked to the side of the bed, where my legs slumped off, and stood with the front of his shoes brushing my bare toetips. He gives me a new look, one I never saw with Jay.

“You really think a chair could stop the only consulting criminal?” he asked, and I realized it was pride. Jay was the perfect man—probably why I didn’t find him quite as appealing as my friends did. But Jim, Jim wasn’t perfect. And he was arrogant.

“No, but I didn’t know how he’d get around it, either,” I mumbled, surveying my captor and reminding myself he wasn’t just my exboyfriend anymore. He was also highly dangerous. Sherlock’s equal and opposite.

Or was I just freaking myself out?

“I used the window,” he admitted, turning around and glancing at my desk. He walked closer to it as I turned around to look at the window.

“We’re on the fourth… Okay,” I said, spotting a tree and a ledge that a determined man could probably scale.

That was also a ledge a determined woman could tiptoe the other way along…

 “As I was saying,” Jim said, picking up my sketchbook and flipping through, showing me the very picture of John’s jumper I scoffed at yesterday and a few attempts at Sherlock’s cheekbones. 

“Oh. I draw things… That interest me,” I said, raising one shoulder and digging my right big toe into the carpet. Shouldn’t he have figured that out after dating me for two and a half months? I glanced out the window again, noting the strength of the tree limbs. They looked pretty sturdy. I was being suspicious; I needed to focus on Jim. He liked attention.

I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I drew you, too.” I didn’t mean the seductive, alluring tone that my voice suddenly adopted, but from what I could read of Jim’s face, he was open to it. The upward flick of his left eyebrow. His feet shifting to a slightly more open position. My sketchbook, dropped to the desk.

“I interest you?” he asked, taking a step toward me, bringing him even with my abandoned chair. “How so?”

“I didn’t really mean that you interested me, by that,” I stumbled, ruining any chance of me pulling off a seduction.

 “No, maybe not. But you were being honest,” he said, his voice gliding up and down in pitch.

I swallowed again, trying to regain some kind of poise. Nervous swallowing seemed to be the theme of the day. “Yes, but. I guess, you do interest me, but it’s just because you were so good at putting on that other persona. How much you must hate yourself, to be able to hide all of your real self so deeply ins-”

The back of his hand across my cheek felt like more of a punch than a slap. Not that I’d ever been really punched or slapped before, but this slap didn’t meet my expectations. My mouth slipped into an “O” even as my palm flew to cover my cheek.

Jim’s shoes were once again inches from my toes. He was breathing heavily, clenching the hand that just traveled across my cheek. I blinked up at him, startled, before he turned and left my room, slamming the door behind him.

I rotated my lower jaw, wincing a little, before walking over to my desk and throwing my sketchbook in the wide drawer, slamming it almost as loudly as Jim slammed my door.

 

 A few hours later, I tried the door, finally hungry enough to chance a run in with the captor I was recently shown in a whole new light. I didn’t expect it to be locked, but I should have. The window was locked the thirty times I tried it, so the door was just another place he was a move ahead.

I sighed and leaned against the door, knocking on it disheartedly. 

“One second, love of my life!” came a high pitched call from farther away in the flat than I would’ve thought my knock would carry. I sighed again, resting against my desk.

The door flew open, revealing Jim in a new set of clothes. A t-shirt and a pair of jeans were not things I expected Jim to ever wear. He looked good in them.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, taking a step back. Although distance hadn’t helped me last time he got angry over something I said.

“Nothing, just need a bit of a disguise,” he drawled, cocking his hip to the left and his head to the right. “We’re going out today!”

“Yeah?” I asked. 

“Yes, and you need a disguise too!” he cawed, bringing his shoulders up toward his ears and smiling.

“I’m sure no one will recognize me. Unless Sherlock put out a missing person memo with your name attached and my face is plastered across every telephone pole from here to America?” I asked.

“No, no. I think he and his pet are trying to keep everything between themselves. That friend of yours seems to know you very well.”

“Ella’s making them not take it to the police and the press?” I asked, impressed. Normally Mariella is the absolute picture of doing what’s right.

“I assume. Sherlock took down the camera I hid in his flat,” Jim said, cocking his hip and bringing his left hand out from behind his back. A department store plastic bag hung from two of his fingers.

“What if I refuse-?”

“Then I guess you can stay holed up in this room… Wouldn’t that be ex _ci_ ting,” he drawled, looking around my room.

“Why didn’t you put me in your room?” I asked, remembering the larger room we stayed in one night we drank too much. The grey silk sheets of his king sized bed, the plain dark blue walls.

“Haven’t you wandered in there?” he asked, throwing the bag on my bed and spinning the chair around to flop down in it. All the while finding some way to retain his elegance, of course.

“Well, no,” I said, dragging the toes of my right foot across the carpet.

“I’m not staying there anymore, silly. The bed’s gone, the room’s empty. As if I would stay with you in the same flat,” he said, scoffing and leaning back. The chair creaked.

He thought I’d kill him in his sleep?

“Oh. If you want me to change, you’re going to have to leave,” I managed. If he was so excited to go on this trip, why did he sit down?

“Great! You’re coming! Five minutes!” he said, using his high pitched mocking tone. The one that apparently came with the real Jim, because although he’d used it very often since I learned of his criminal overlord status, as Jay, he mainly spoke in even, normal tones, or that deep one that delighted my hormones.

He skipped out of the room, leaving me to close the door behind him. I rolled my eyes before dumping the department store clothes onto the bed. The clothes weren’t like anything in my closet, but I supposed that was the disguise part. A few brightly colored, busy dresses and cardigans and some trendy long skirts and blouses decorated my comforter. I sighed and picked a dress.

The things we do for chances at freedom.

“Glad you picked that one,” Jim said. Looking down on the dress, I vaguely remembered him telling me his favorite colors were green and blue. Which were both all over this dress. My lips smooshed together and flattened into a line, with the left side going up and the right slanting down.

“I can change-,” I began, turning around.

He grabbed my wrist and pulled me to the door. “No time, you used all five of your minutes, slowpoke. Let’s go!”

He towed me through the hallway, down the stairs, and out the door, walking slowly enough that I wasn’t being dragged behind him, but not slowly enough for me to catch up to him. He shoved me toward the passenger’s seat and walked around to the driver’s, opening the door and sliding in. 

I froze. This was my chance. He was in the car, it wasn’t started yet, I could just-

“Get in,” his voice floated through the passenger’s window that was rolling down. “Do you think I don’t have guns trained on Mary and that barista you like so much, ready to shoot at my text?”

No, I hadn’t thought. Why would Mary or Lizzie suffer for my mistakes? That didn’t make any sense in my head. But now that I knew…

 I opened the door and slid inside.

“Good choice,” he said in what I could only guess might be his usual voice. It was kind of boring. I could see why he wouldn’t use it much.

He drove us to a street of shops I never found the time to explore, parking a few streets away. As he ambled next to me with his hands shoved deep in his pockets and whistling, I wondered what the point of this was. To show me that even if I did make it out of his prison, I still wouldn’t be able to get away?

“Here we are,” he enthused, wrapping his arm around mine and tugging me through a door before I caught the name of the shop.

Walking in, though, cleared up any questions about what kind of shop it was. A table of paint brushes of all sizes stood to my left, a table containing just acrylic paints to my right. Easels stood against the back wall, canvases leaned and hung all around.

“Look around. My treat,” Jim whispered, bringing his mouth far too close to my face. He pushed me with one finger further in the store.

“Great,” I muttered, trying to shove as much animosity as I could into my voice. Lately, my art supplies had been running low. Unemployment can do that to a girl.

I was browsing the water colors when I realized Jim left me alone. In a store. A quick glance up, however, showed that he wasn’t wandering far. In fact, he was just an aisle over, talking to a pretty blonde woman…

 Who bore a striking resemblance to Mariella.

I set down the three paints I was looking at and walked around the table, trying not to run, trying not to get my hopes up.

“Ella?” I asked, clearing my throat, about a meter away.

Jim and his companion turned. Jim’s face was flatter and less expressive than I could remember seeing it, but Ella’s was the opposite. She ran the few steps toward me and threw her arms around my shoulders.

“Oh, Lane. Thank God,” she mumbled into my hair, squeezing me at least as tightly as I was squeezing her.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, opening the eyes I hadn’t realized I closed and watching Jim. Wondering if he’d rip me away.

 “I was invited,” she said, stepping back and glancing at Jim. She cleared her throat. “He said we can have a few minutes to talk.”

“Oh. Okay,” I said, not taking my eyes off Jim as we walked a few tables away. When Jim turned away, I set my eyes on the paintbrushes, picking up a few and turning them this way and that. The cashier was giving us a look I didn’t think Jim would be okay with, disguise or no.

“You need to be very careful, Laney okay?” Ella whispered, looking at Jim and wrapping her right hand around my elbow. 

 “I know. He has people watching you and Lizzie. I know, I’ll be careful,” I replied.

“No, no. That’s not it, Lane. He just told me this will be our last meeting because some underlings got word of you. I guess they’ve been trying to overthrow him for a while. They noticed he was keeping you alive and they think he’s got some criminal crush thing on you,” Ella said, eyes wide. “If they get hold of you…”

“He doesn’t let me out of the flat, Ell. I’ll be fine. How is… The investigation going? Are they still looking for me or?”

“Yes,” Ella said, lowering her eyebrows. “Why wouldn’t they be? John said Sherlock found some kind of clue, but John was too confused about it to explain it to me. Do you--?”

“If you tell her where we are, you will be very sorry,” Jim’s voice floated over a table to interrupt Ella’s question.

 “I wasn’t going to,” I lied, sneering. He nodded with his eyes narrowed and mouth turned down before walking away.

“Okay. Fine, but John said something about Sherlock not being the only one looking for you, so be careful. Okay?” Ella asked, sliding her hand down to mine. She gripped it. Her cold clammy hands had never felt more comforting.

“I will be. I promise. You, too, okay? I know that look on your face when you talk about John, and he’s in a pretty dangerous position. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“The kidnapping victim, worried about her flatmate’s romantic adventures,” Ella scoffed, smiling. “You’re something, Lane.”

“Time’s up girls!” Jim chirped, taking long strides to separate our hands and fold mine into his own. His grip was too tight. It felt calculated. “We have a tight schedule to keep. Say goodbye!”

I frowned at Ella. “I’ll see you, Ella,” I said, wrapping my free arm around her as she wrapped both of hers under my shoulders.

“Be safe,” she whispered into my hair. It felt so much more reassuring than anything Jim whispered that close to me.

“You, too,” I said, trying to resist Jim’s yanks on my arm.

But eventually his strength overcame our hug. I craned my head to look over my shoulder at my friend until Jim and I left the store and stumbled down the sidewalk. Well, I stumbled.

Was that his apology?

“Where to next? A coffee shop and a quick meeting with Lizzie?” I asked, trying to tug my hand out of his.

“No, no more familiar faces on this trip, I’m afraid. We’re just going to be stocking up on some necessities. As well as some things that hopefully keep you entertained.” He raised his other hand, revealing a plastic bag from the art store. My eyes widened. “You don’t notice anything, do you?” he asked, tugging me closer to him.

“Shut up,” I mumbled, slouching beside him and giving up the struggle to regain my hand.

“Gladly,” he replied.

And, surely enough, the rest of our shopping trip was in silence. A grocery store, a pharmacy, and then the car. We returned to his flat, he gave me the bag of arts supplies (well, more like tossed it at me and watched as I grumbled and herded all the supplies back into the bag from where they spilled on the ground), and I holed myself up in his room.

I wondered if I should be as worried about Jim’s underlings as Mariella was. Because to me, Jim Moriarty was a scary man to mess with, and I hadn’t known him very long. It seemed like I’d be pretty safe under his roof, if I couldn’t even think about running without him knowing.


	7. Seven

I shaded in a few leafless trees on the side of the road. It must be early fall, I decided, moving to add more leaves. Early fall wouldn't leave the trees this bare. And the person in the road was looking... wrong somehow. I needed to shade in the hair, it should be darker...

“Do you know yet why I kidnapped you?” Jim asked, standing in the doorway. I didn’t even hear the door open.

“Some weird spurned lover mess with Sherlock?” I asked off-handedly, running the end of my pencil against my bottom lip.

“No,” he said, jumping up onto my desk, crumpling a few drawings in the process.

“Then what?” I asked, darkening the sidewalk.

“You’re supposed to guess,” he sung, swinging his feet back and forth.

“Okay, I did,” I replied, wondering how to make the man walking down the road resemble the man sitting on my desk less.

“It’s to show Sherlock that he can’t solve everything. When I feel he’s been properly frustrated, I’ll let you go again.”

“That’s pretty dumb,” I replied, shifting in my seat, wondering where he was steering this conversation. Sometimes I felt like an equal in these random conversations he’d start—most likely in hopes of beginning some hilarious Stockholm syndrome chain of events—but there were other times, like now, when I realized he was every bit as intelligent as Sherlock. The difference was that Sherlock seemed to tell John what went through his head, even if John didn’t get it. Jim just kept trucking onward.

He pouted. After all of those praising “oh so nefarious Jim” thoughts I had, he pouted like my two year old nephew.

“I thought it was especially clever in its simplicity.”

 “Is Sherlock not a believer in jealousy or Occam’s razor?” I asked offhandedly, wondering if he’d go away so I could use more of my new supplies.

He was quiet, not moving or speaking. Strange, he usually had a reply within three seconds. I leafed through some of the new graphite pencils, looking for the lightest one. His hand slammed down on the pile of grey and black pencils.

“Why’d you say that?” he asked. I turned my head, eyes travelling up his arm to his shoulder and then face. I was expecting his face to be twisted into an expression that could rival the one on his face when he slapped me. Instead, his face was emotionless, eyes wide.

“Eeer, well, you’re a three year old,” I said, venturing into dangerous territory. If he slapped me again, I might react the right way, which would be the wrong way in a situation with Jim- stop thinking. “You’re claiming the toy fire engine-- you want to play with it and you don’t want any of the other kids touching it. But then you see Sherlock, he’s playing with a pirate or something. You don’t care what it is, but because he has it, you want it. The teachers won’t let you steal it from him. So when he puts it down, instead of being completely disinterested in it now that he doesn’t have it, you’re even more interested in how you can make him want it as much as you wanted it. But you’ve got to be sure the teachers don’t let him steal it from you, either,” I rambled, shoving my hands under the desk in the hopes of concealing their slight shake.

He narrowed his eyes, flicked them away from me, and straightened. Then he “Hmm”ed. And jumped off my desk and walked away.

 

A few weeks swam by. I drew and painted and scrawled, my art taking a distinctly darker feel the longer I was caged in the mundane flat. I explored the room that was so lavishly adorned back when Jim was Jay. Felt inspired by the transformation and the bleakness. Leaned against a wall. Drew.

But suddenly, it wasn’t just a room, it was also a crouching dragon. I had to start all over. I put the first drawing aside, taking a new sheet, sitting on the abandoned carpet that was the most comfortable floor covering I ever sat on. I hunched over the page on my lap, scratching lines, deepening lines, extending lines… 

It was a zone I hadn’t experienced since college.

“You finally wandered up here, hmm?” Jim asked, his voice far away. I “hmm”ed. He was rubbing off on me.

The lines weren’t exactly right in the top right corner. They needed something. There was something missing. What was missing?

“I’m letting you leave.”

My eyebrows touched over my nose. They shook hands, exchanged pleasantries… But this line…

“No party? I’m sorry. Should I have made the announcement a bigger deal? Thrown streamers?”

I swallowed and glanced up. I couldn’t figure out what it was.

“You’ll have to stay with Sherlock and his pet, because they’ll be too afraid of me snatching you back up, but you’ll be able to see that barista and your roommate. It’ll just be for-“

“You’re letting me go?” I let the pad fall from my lap as I stood. “But, I mean, is Sherlock—Wow!” Turning around, his face was slack. No expression, which was just weird—for Jay and Jim.

I bit my lip and dug my nails into my palms. Damn it, he was just getting your hopes up, Tavish, I scolded myself. But his face wasn’t displaying usual malicious joy, like I’d expect...

“It’s not a trick,” he said, his voice deep. Did he know that his voice was most attractive at that octave? Even as I was celebrating my possible approaching freedom, it still reminded me of his kisses. “I think Sherlock’s understood my point. There is no further purpose in keeping you here.” He walked into the room, leaving the door frame, and walking around me in a semicircle.

“Great!” I exclaimed, clapping my hands and keeping them clasped in front of me. “So what now?”

He paused and looked at his shoes. They were shiny enough, I wanted to tell him. Just tell me what’s next. “Welll. I guess we just say goodbye,” he said, looking up and slowly raising his arms to his shoulders. “Unless you want to have break up sex,” he offered, his arms falling.

“I’ll pass,” I replied, bending down to gather the papers. I straightened.

“Shame,” he sang, leaning forward on his toes to tap his nose against mine. I winced, trying not to recoil, and tightened my grip on the sketchbook.

“So, bye?” I asked, crossing my right foot in front of my left.

“So eager,” he chuckled, smiling down at his shoes again before raising his face to mine. “Yes, Elaine. Goodbye.”

I forced the tips of my lips up, feeling, for some reason, that I owed the man this silent thanks. Maybe because he was letting me go, maybe because I was virtually unscathed. I didn’t know why. But I turned and walked out of the door, stopping only at my personal cage to gather a few more paintings and drawings.

The sketch of the man who was undeniably Jim Moriarty walking down the road in early fall remained in the center of the desk that was never mine.

 

“Ella!” I called, flinging my apartment door open and dropping my papers on the table by the door. “I’m home!”

Scattering, clothes ruffling? A zip? Clearing of the throa---oooh hoo hoo….

 “Is Miss Ella entertaining a male visitor?” I called, trying not to chuckle to myself in the hallway. I restrained myself from rushing into the living room to see just how far they were in their declothing. 

“Well, no. We were just—watching a movie, you dirty bitch,” Ella called, clearly uncomfortable. 

I didn’t stop my laughter this time. It felt so great. Being home. “John, do you want to call Sherlock? Jim said you guys wouldn’t let me stay here, I want the official verdict.”

“Yep—yeah, sure. No problem,” came the reply. I smiled into my hand, leaning back against the wall of my very own flat. 

It was a nice wall. All of the walls here were nice walls.

 

“Yes, she’s staying here,” John stated, standing over Sherlock, who was sprawled across a couch in his house coat. Sherlock’s arms were crossed and his hair was askew. I wanted to draw. Ever since Jim’s, I wanted to draw. I refrained. Like they needed to think I was any weirder. I could draw later.

“Okay,” Sherlock agreed, although that was not the tune he’d been singing the past half hour. He swept himself up, standing very close to John and looking down. “She’ll stay in your room. You’ve got the couch.”

As he strode away, John rolled his eyes and plopped on the couch recently vacated. “I’m sorry,” he said, staring pointedly at me. I felt taken aback.

“It’s fine, Sherlock’s a walk in the park—“  “Compared to Moriarty, yes, yes, I should’ve figured,” John said, collapsing back on the couch. He groaned. “These past weeks have been hell. You have no idea how grumpy Sherlock gets when he doesn’t figure things out.”

Ella walked over from the door to perch on the edge of the couch by John. Her finger traced over his hand. “It’s over,” she stated. That seemed to deflate some of John’s stress.

“I know, it just doesn’t feel very over,” he replied, sitting back up. “Come, Elaine. I’ll show you to my room. It’s a bit of a mess, I admit, but I’ll try to tidy up a bit.”

Jumpers, socks, trousers, and even a few ties sprinkled the room. The bed was unmade, but John gathered up the sheets and blankets anyway, throwing them on the heap of clothes that was slowly forming in the corner of the room. He walked past El and I, excusing himself.

Ell smooshed herself further into the door, watching John walk to a closet to grab some more sheets. Then she looked over at me and blinked. “Are you okay?” she asked for the first time. It was calm, quiet, and I knew I had all of her attention.

It was the strangest, most touching way I’d ever been asked that question.  I still lied. “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, slipping on a smile and patting the crook of her right elbow for a second. “He let me go, I’m very fine indeed.” I tried to widen the smile, only to find I’d overestimated how widely I smiled to begin with. She had to know I was lying. Damn it.

She smiled back, a soft one, not too bright and overbearing, but just a smile. “I’m glad. I was so worried.”

John bumbled back in, sheets, pillow cases and blankets in a ball just high enough to obscure his vision, knocking into the door frame and Ella and me all before finding his way to the bed. “Sorry,” he said, dropping the sheets on the bed. “I was surprised to find Sherlock put away the laundry last time I asked him to. But I guess I should’ve suspected.”

Ell just laughed and strode over to help John untangle the sheets. I watched them, wondering what it was like.


	8. Eight

John’s bed was nice, even though it still smelled like boy. It wasn’t lavish like my bed at Jim’s fake flat was, or practically a piece of cardboard like my bed, but it was simple. It was comfortable.   The other thing that was comfortable was that I was safe, Moriarty held at bay by two men that seemed overly competent. And Mariella was back in my life, and I could resume my morning café trips with Lizzie and Neal criticizing my life.

“Elaine,” someone said. They were far away. I didn’t want to listen.

“Elaine,” the voice came again, louder, closer, clearer.

“Elaine!” The voice was loud, but managed to maintain decorum… Sherlock? 

“Why are you in John’s room?” I grumbled, keeping my eyes closed and rubbing my temples. I could feel a headache brewing.

“He’s… Busy.” My eyes shot open. Sherlock stood over me, staring at me like I was a fish in a bowl. I swatted at his face.

“With Ella?” I asked, wondering if Sherlock was using my makeshift room as a hiding place from Ella and John snogging sessions. 

He cleared his throat and slid his eyes away from me to study the pile of clothes in the corner. “Not exactly.”

“Why are you here then?” I rubbed my eyes and slid my feet from under the covers to touch the floor. It was cold. I remember this very clearly. The floor was cold.

He huffed a little. “John isn’t capable of delivering the news so the responsibility fell to me.”

“Could I wait for John?” I asked, grabbing the blanket and wrapping it around my shoulders. “You guys need to cool it on the air conditioning.”

Sherlock returned his eyes to me. “No. Your friend Ella… Moriarty’s inferiors thought she was you. They told him he could give up his position to their leader or they’d kill you. They saw them together in the arts shop and…”

He kept talking. I let him. Maybe explaining it felt better to him. But he wasn’t the only one who could partake in the science of deduction.

I clutched the blankets tighter, keeping the cold away. My knees were in front of me, knobby and bare. Why was I wearing shorts to bed when it was so cold? Oh, they were John’s boxers. I hadn’t anything else to wear. The… the…

“She died quickly, they shot her through the head,” Sherlock was saying.

“Can I see her?” I asked, digging my nails into my palms through the gauzy blanket. 

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at me. Probably wondering if this was a normal sentimental person’s reaction. “I can ask John, but I see no reason—”

“You’re going to ask John if I can see the corpse of the girl he was snogging six hours ago?” I asked, making my voice as harsh as I could. Tears pooled at the corners of my eyes but I couldn’t. I couldn’t cry.

He nodded, a sharp downward motion. His hair flopped. “Let’s go.”

 

“I must admit I’m relieved to find you didn’t react as emotionally as John did,” Sherlock said, staring out of the taxi window while his hands fidgeted with each other in his lap.

“I’m sure you noticed it was hard for me not to,” I said, watching his hands. His right index finger and thumb grasped opposite sides of his left hand’s thumb, before moving on to the index finger, middle finger, ring, and pinky.

He hmmed. He hmmed? Jim—

“Did Jim know it wasn’t me?” I asked, watching Sherlock’s face. Would I be able to tell if he lied?

“No,” Sherlock said, his mouth twitching. It seemed like a more regretful twitch than anything. “He called. He said it was strange a girl as dim as you could escape our watch. John raced upstairs, but you were still knocked out in his bed.” Sherlock cleared his throat. “John came back, relieved. He told me they got the wrong woman. When Jim hung up, when I didn’t smile back, he started thinking and figured it out on his own.”

I cupped my hand around my forehead. The headache was blooming. “Jim thought it was me and he just let them kill her.”  I should’ve made him like me more. I should’ve slept with him or something. What could I have done differently that would’ve made my best friend come back from that situation unharmed?

   

The morgue was empty. Besides Sherlock and this skinny diffident girl occupying his attention for me, it was just the body of the best friend I made in England—no, ever, the best friend I made ever, and me. She wasn’t there. My best friend. She wasn’t there.

 The table, she lay on the table, or what she used to be. She lay on the table, in a bag. If children came into morgues more often, the bag would surely carry a “Choking hazard” sticker. But the people that went inside those bags didn’t… They didn’t have to worry about choking.

At least not anymore.

Sherlock and the girl spoke softly in the corner. I appreciated that Sherlock was trying to keep it down, or maybe he was just trying not to let me hear something, but I really wished they’d leave the room altogether. The girl seemed to want to come bother me, but Sherlock pointed out the door and jabbed his fingers a few times.

Why was I watching them? I came here for my friend. To say goodbye.

I slid toward the bag with my friend. The zipper, where was it?

I didn’t want to touch the bag. Maybe this wasn’t a good idea. I could see my friend later, when she was made up for her last performance.

God, she was just a teacher. A teacher that was too nice to the impersonal American. A teacher that harbored some desperate need for romance, the stem of which she couldn’t even tell me…

“I’m sorry,” a voice croaked. It didn’t sound like Sherlock, but it was deep, so I turned around to tell him it was fine.

It wasn’t Sherlock. It wasn’t Jim. It was Jay. His face was relaxed, falling into a state that was much too calm for the everchanging faces of Jim Moriarty, Consulting Criminal. 

“I know,” I muttered, looking down and turning back to my friend. I should open the bag.

“Don’t,” Jay said, reaching over my right shoulder to clasp my hand. Inside his hand, inside my hand, was the zipper that kept the bag up around my…

“It’s why I came,” I replied, but didn’t move.

“It’s a bad idea,” he said. I could hear his scowl, probably because he was my only company for the past month. “I don’t know why he let you come here.” 

“Why is he—” I turned to the corner he was fighting with the girl in. Empty.

“She told him the proper thing to do would be to stop you, but he had a sample he needed to examine,” Jay said, drawing our hands behind me, turning me in the process. 

“There are like ninety machines in here,” I replied, blinking. Blinking. Blinking. I would spend the rest of my life blinking.

“I made sure the one he needed wouldn’t be,” Jay said, slipping into Jim. Another second, then he slipped back.

“So you heard…” Was he really slipping back and forth or, in my time of need, was I inventing another side to him I could not hate? 

He nodded. I tried to turn back, but his hand.

“You let them kill me,” I said, looking at our joined hands.

“I did.”

 “You didn’t. You didn’t,” I swallowed the bubble stampeding up my throat. “You didn’t save her.” I swallowed again. Swallowing and blinking.

“I’m sorry,” he repeated, but it wasn’t a switch. Nothing changed. She was still dead. She was still my best friend. I was still swallowing. Blinking. Breathing.

“Time’s up,” Sherlock said, holding the door open and looking at me. I didn’t wipe off the tears that broke from the bubble in my throat and through my defenses. He’d know anyway. “A friend from the Yard wants to talk to you.”

I filled my lungs with the deepest breath I could give them and nodded. “You know whatever was happening. It stopped now, right?” I asked Jim or Jay or whoever was in that body. I asked him without looking. Sherlock’s expression changed for less than a split second before his head popped back through the doorframe and the door followed it. 

“I know,” he said. And despite the time I spent with him, I didn’t know what his face would look like.  But I didn’t look. I swallowed, blinked, breathed, and took back my hand. I walked through the door, away from my friend and my… I didn’t have a word for him.   “You can stay with us as long as you want,” Sherlock said after my meeting with some cop Sherlock kept making disgusted faces at. “John likes sleeping on the couch. Gives him something to complain about.”

I nodded, glad Sherlock wasn’t the type to expect a smile. “I’ll think about it.”


End file.
